Tina Peters, the Republican former election clerk imprisoned for crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, will receive clemency from Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and soon be released from custody, Polis exclusively told CNN.
The decision followed a statement in Peters’ clemency application, obtained by CNN from Polis’ office, in which Peters acknowledged for the first time since her 2024 conviction that she “made a mistake” and “misled” Colorado election officials.
Polis said in an interview Friday that he was cutting Peters’ prison sentence in half, reducing it to 4.5 years. Based on her time already served since 2024 and Colorado’s early release rules, she’ll be released on parole on June 1, Polis said in a letter to Peters obtained by CNN.
A jury in conservative-leaning Mesa County convicted Peters in 2024 of conspiring with fellow election deniers to breach her county’s election systems in hopes of proving President Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 voter-fraud claims.
Trump has waged a long pressure campaign against Colorado over Peters’ incarceration. She is the last Trump ally still in prison for 2020 election-related crimes.
“I made a mistake four years ago,” Peters said in the statement released Friday. “I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. Going forward, I will make sure that my actions always follow the law.”
Polis said he agrees with a recent appeals court ruling which found that the trial judge improperly punished Peters for her protected speech about the 2020 election, telling CNN he’d like others to come to the same conclusion as the court. But he knows, especially among Democrats in his state and beyond, that’s going to be tough.
“I hope that Democrats don’t sacrifice our deeply held belief in free speech because of political expediency or disregard for what people are saying,” Polis said. “There should be no consideration of what we say, how unpopular it is, how inaccurate it is in sentencing or in criminal proceedings.”
Polis said he also heard from Trump privately in addition to the president’s public posts demanding Peters, 70, be released. He said that the president often gets facts wrong about Peters, her crime and his ability to pardon her for state-level offenses.
“He gets her age wrong. He gets what she did wrong. My focus was doing what’s right and then looking at the merits of the case,” Polis said.
He says Peters committed a crime, and he was personally disgusted with what Peters said about the 2020 election, “but we have to make sure our justice system is blind and fair.”
In a statement released by Peters’ attorneys Friday night, she thanked the governor and said she has “learned and grown during my time in prison” and is now “sorry” for the “mistakes” she made in 2021.
“I condemn any and all bullying, threats and acts of violence against voters, county clerks, election workers, and other public officials, and concerned citizens like myself,” Peters said. “Upon release, I plan to do my best through legal means to support election integrity and, based on my own personal experiences, to elevate the cause of prison reform.”
She added, “I am grateful for a second chance.”
Witnesses testified at Peters’ trial that in 2021, she gave people affiliated with pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell unauthorized access to the election offices in Mesa County, where she was the clerk. Witnesses said they made copies of sensitive election data so they could audit the 2020 results.
Until the statement released Friday, Peters had denied wrongdoing and maintained for years that she was trying to preserve election records, as required by federal law.
Last month, a state appeals court upheld Peters’ criminal convictions. However, it ordered the trial judge to re-sentence her, finding that he improperly based part of the punishment on Peters’ protected speech about elections, violating her First Amendment rights.
A date for a new sentencing hearing hadn’t been set yet. Peters was eligible for parole in 2028. CNN has reported that, even without clemency, Colorado law could have made Peters eligible to move into a halfway house or a similar arrangement as soon as this November with good behavior.
Through her allies, Peters had continued promoting debunked conspiracies about election-rigging from prison.
Her official website still says she is the victim of “politically motivated” prosecutions designed to “silence” her for “exposing what she believed were critical flaws in the election system.” Her social media feed includes unfounded claims from supposed informants who claimed American voting machines can flip votes using technology from Venezuela.
Her account reshared a post Tuesday from a radio host who urged Trump to “INVADE COLORADO if you have to” and “do whatever needs to be done” to free Peters from prison.
The governor has seen the posts and what Peters has continued to say. That’s not a reason to keep her behind bars, he said.
“I hope that she’s no longer a martyr, that she is just another person who believes in conspiracies on the street after this,” Polis said. “I hope she doesn’t believe in conspiracies, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Still, Peters’ impending release is a victory for Trump and the right-wing election denier movement, which hails her as a hero who was unjustly prosecuted.
In a lawsuit against the Trump administration, Colorado officials accused the administration of a “revenge campaign” that included closing a Colorado-based climate lab, denying federal disaster assistance requests from the state, yanking federal transportation funds and threatening to withhold federal food assistance for low-income families.
Trump also vetoed a bill for a Colorado water project and moved US Space Command from Colorado Springs to Alabama. And in February, Trump tried to exclude Polis and another Democratic governor from what is traditionally a bipartisan gathering of governors at the White House.
The White House says these decisions were well-founded and legally supported.
Trump issued a symbolic federal pardon for Peters in December, but Polis is the only person who could let Peters out of prison because she was convicted of state charges.
Polis pointed out that the commutation decision is not a pardon because he believes she broke the law and wants her to live with that felony on her record.
Polis’ term ends in January, and he has bucked his party on some key issues in recent years. The Democratic Party has been in near-universal condemnation of the effort to argue Trump’s 2020 election loss was fraudulent.
Polis sloughed off talk of how the decision might affect a 2028 presidential run that some have speculated he might make.
“This has nothing to do with that,” he said. “I think we need to get past the divisive rhetoric of today and understand that just because you’re on the unpopular side of an argument – if you’re a person who believes in conservative things in a liberal state or liberal things in conservative state or conspiracy things in any state or that the earth is flat – you have that free speech.”
After news of the commutation broke, Trump posted “FREE TINA!” on his social website, Truth Social. The White House did not comment further on the matter. But there was also swift and bipartisan pushback from Colorado officials who condemned Polis’ move to set Peters free early.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold – the Democratic election official who Peters admitted in her statement to Polis that she “misled” in 2021 – said in a statement that Polis’ commutation was an “affront to democracy.”
“It was more than just misleading my office,” Griswold said at a press conference Friday, referring to Peters’ statement to the governor. “I do not think that Peters is remorseful. If she was, she would stop using that incident to push out conspiracies and lies.”
Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, a Republican who first charged Peters, said Polis’ explanations were “misguided and misunderstood,” and that Peters received “special treatment that ordinary defendants would never receive.”
“This is a sad day for Mesa County citizens, who endured the disruption, expense, and damage caused by Ms. Peters’ conduct, only to watch their Governor arrogantly disregard the voices of those closest to the case, numerous elected leaders, and the rule of law itself,” Rubinstein said.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who is running to succeed Polis as governor in this year’s election, said the commutation was “mind-boggling and wrong as a matter of basic justice.” Weiser, who spent the last two years defending Peters’ convictions in court, also said the original nine-year punishment was “a reasonable sentence based on her criminal conduct.”
Matt Crane, a former Republican election official who now runs the Colorado County Clerks Association, said members of his group privately lobbied Polis against clemency, and they are now “furious, disgusted and deeply disappointed.”
Releasing Peters early sends a “reckless and dangerous message” to the public and election officials, said Crane, who blasted Polis for “bending to the knee” to “conspiracy movements that are actively undermining our institutions.”
“This is now Governor Polis’ legacy,” Crane said.
This story has been updated with additional details.